WT Business Beat

By Nick Wakeman

CACI scores big win with TSA infrastructure deal

CACI International has scored a major takeaway by capturing a nearly $200 million contract to maintain and operate the IT infrastructure for the Transportation Security Administration.

The IT Management Performance Analysis and Collaborative Technologies contract, also known as IMPACT, is the third version of the IT managed services contract to support TSA.

General Dynamics, through its acquisition of CSRA, is the incumbent on the previous contract known as IT Infrastructure Program or ITIP.

CSRA pursued IMPACT and even filed two pre-award protests with the Government Accountability Office. CSRA first complained that there were substantial changes to the solicitation that TSA should reopen discussions with bidders.

TSA agreed to do that but CSRA filed a second protest in September so bidders could submit new proposals. TSA eventually agreed to do that as well.

To win IMPACT, which was competed under the Eagle II contract, CACI faced not only the incumbent but also other bidders including AECOM, DXC Technologies and Science Applications International Corp.

It will be interesting to see if General Dynamics files a protest to try to hang onto the work. But whether it is GD or another unsuccessful bidder, it will be surprising if no one files a protest.

After all that is a tradition with this contract, which first went to Unisys Corp. in 2002.

Unisys helped build the original IT infrastructure as TSA was being stood up as an agency, even before the Homeland Security Department was created. The original contract was known as the IT Managed Services contract.

Unisys lost the recompete to Computer Sciences Corp. in 2010, when it was called ITIP. Before CSC, which later spun out its government business to help forr CSRA, could take over it had to weather several rounds of protests by Unisys.

For IMPACT, CSRA (now part of General Dynamics) filed two pre-award protests and probably went a good ways toward alienating the customer. Is a third protest in the works?

GD would not comment about the IMPACT award.

CACI also declined to comment and TSA has not returned a request for comment.

The awarded was posted in the Federal Procurement Data System on June 1 with a value of $193.8 million through Sept. 26, 2021.

Earlier estimates had placed the value of IMPACT at between $500 million and $1 billion over five years. This award is for just over three years. Why the gap will be a question to ask once TSA and CACI decide they can talk about the contract.

IMPACT will be used to support IT needs, including infrastructure, hardware and software, for 60,000 TSA end users at 550 airports and other locations such as TSA headquarters.

CACI, as well as the other bidders, see IMPACT as a potential opportunity to apply enterprise IT skills as well as bring some IT modernization to TSA’s infrastructure and end-users.

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